Elder Law Attorneys Get “Props” During Fresh Air Interview with Cartoonist
Roz Chast, well known for her cartoons in The New Yorker, has been getting well deserved coverage of her new graphic book, “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?” She brings her light, dark touch to bear on a tough topic, a daughter’s relationship with her increasingly frail and sometimes stubborn parents.
Despite the obvious relevance of her book to this Blog, I was nonetheless pleasantly surprised when I heard Chast interviewed recently on the radio by Terry Gross for Fresh Air. Roz Chast recounts how a lawyer specializing in “elder care law” (the phrase I increasingly hear used by lay people, displacing “elder law”) helped her and her parents get to the heart of some very tough issues they’d been avoiding, as suggested by the title of her memoir. As captured on the NPR website report, in describing the lawyer during the interview, Chast said:
“This person was really good. And I think he was able to … somehow make them trust him enough that they could open up a little bit about things that they really never wanted to open up about, like money and talking about the future. I was there with them when he came over and we talked about things like health care proxy forms. Things I had never thought about, things I had never heard of. It was very, very helpful.”
Reading between those few lines, I see the type of caring, tactful attorney — and someone who makes home visits — that I often have the pleasure of working with in Elder Law.
Chaz also talks humorously — and with great candor — about the dollars and “sense” of long-term care, and how she as a daughter felt about her parents’ money going to pay for assisted living.
Refreshing Fresh Air!